The Dance (by An Antiquary) eBook

The illustration (fig. 43) of a dance of angels and
religious shows us that Fra Angelico thought the practice
joyful; this dance is almost a counterpart of that
amongst the Greeks (fig. 11). The other dance,
by Sandro Botticelli (fig. 44), is taken from his
celebrated “Nativity” in the National
Gallery. Although we have records of performances
in churches, no illustrations of an early date have
come to the knowledge of the writer. [Illustration:
Fig. 30.—­Dancing to horn and pipe.
From an Anglo-Saxon MS.]

That the original inhabitants of Britain danced—­that
the Picts, Danes, Saxons and Romans danced may be
taken for granted, but there seems little doubt that
our earliest illustrations of dancing were of the
Roman tradition. We find the attitude, the instruments
and the clapping of hands, all of the same undoubted
classic character. Tacitus informs us that the
Teutonic youths danced, with swords and spears, and
Olaus Magnus that the Goths, &c., had military dances:
still the military dances in English MSS. (figs. 31,
32) seem more like those of a Pyrrhic character, which
Julius Caesar, the conqueror of England, introduced
into Rome. The illustration (fig. 29) of what
is probably a Saxon gleemen’s dance shows us
the kind of amusement they afforded and how they followed
classic usages.

[Illustration: Fig. 31.—­Anglo-Saxon
sword dance. From the MS. Cleopatra, C. viii.,
British Museum.] The gleemen were reciters, singers
and dancers; and the lower orders were tumblers, sleight-of-hand
men and general entertainers. What may have been
the origin of our hornpipe is illustrated in fig.
30, where the figures dance to the sound of the horn
in much the same attitudes as in the modern hornpipe,
with a curious resemblance to the position in some
Muscovite dances.

The Norman minstrel, successor of the gleeman, used
the double-pipe, the harp, the viol, trumpets, the
horn and a small flat drum, and it is not unlikely
that from Sicily and their South Italian possessions
the Normans introduced classic ideas.

Piers the Plowman used words of Norman extraction
for them, as he speaks of their “Saylen and
Saute.”

The minstrel and harpist does not appear to have danced
very much, but to have left this to the joculator,
and dancing and tumbling and even acrobatic women
and dancers appear to have become common before the
time of Chaucer’s “Tomblesteres.”

[Illustration: Fig. 33.—­Herodias tumbling.
From a MS. end of 13th century (Addl. 18,719, f. 253b),
British Museum.]

That this tumbling and dancing was common in the thirteenth
century is shown by the illustration from the sculpture
at Rouen Cathedral (fig. 34), the illustrations from
a MS. in the British Museum (fig. 33) of Herodias
tumbling and of a design in glass in Lincoln, and other
instances at Ely; Idsworth Church, Hants; Ponce, France,
and elsewhere. It is suggested that the camp
followers of the Crusaders brought back certain dances
and amongst these some of an acrobatic nature, and
many that were reprehensible, which brought down the
anger of the Clergy.